


don’t hear a thing but i can always hear you breathe

by TheKitteh



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Caring!Dean, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt!Sam, M/M, Post Season 8, Sleeping Together, it's like fluff with angst, season 9 non-compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 14:12:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheKitteh/pseuds/TheKitteh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the angel's fell, the brothers make their way towards their bunker. Angels fell, Sam's mind is still a mess and Dean ... Dean's asleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don’t hear a thing but i can always hear you breathe

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [don’t hear a thing but i can always hear you breathe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2333120) by [fayescar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fayescar/pseuds/fayescar)



> Please take note that this is completely NON compliant with whatever Season 9 has given us. 
> 
> thanks & enjoy!

Sam remembers, sometimes. Sometimes he thinks he remembers  _Before_ , sometimes he dreads it’s  _Never_.

He remembers warmth; and that it was a kind of overwhelming, suffocating, _glorious_  warmth. He remembers Dean’s bright eyes and thin curtains that never seemed to cover up the whole of the window, allowing the sun the peek through, hit his cheek and tickle him awake.

He remembers noses brushing, breath caught somewhere deep and how it all felt suspended, like in that split of a second between the jump and the crash; when you lost your ground, but didn’t hit the water just yet.

He remembers the feel of his brother’s lips – plush and skilled and over his – as they traded lazy, languid kisses in the early hours of morning. He Dean’s hand along his jaw, thumb brushing his cheek, keeping him in place like Sam would ever want to go anywhere else. They didn’t get out of bed until they absolutely had to, ankles tangled underneath the sheets and it was everything Sam ever wanted.

He remembers dust motes dancing, he remembers the steady, content _thump-thump-thump_  of his heart, he remembers Dean’s  _good morning_ against his tingling, smiling mouth.

He thinks he knows it’s a dream, but it’s a good dream to have.

* * *

 

It’s a dream, only a dream that leaves him as quietly as it came; leaves him feeling a strange calm and an even stranger itch, settled somewhere deep within his bones.

The day hadn’t completely cracked through the thickness of the night, Sam realizes that as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes, sitting up quietly. On the other bed, Dean shifts restlessly, not awake just yet but obviously not in a deep slumber as well. As if waiting for Sam’s move that would be just a bit too fast, just a tone too loud, to wake up in an instant. It is a strangely comforting thought, right now in the all too familiar grey haze – just before dawn breaks - that bone-deep certainty that Dean is still so tuned to his brother that even in his sleep he seems to realize that Sam is awake.

It’s a nice thing to be sure of, Sam thinks to himself over a jaw-cracking yawn, when  _nice_ things are sort of short of nonexistent in his life. It’s something to hold on to and Sam is man enough to admit that - at barely over thirty - he needs that  _something_  like he needs the friggin’ air.

It also makes  _some_  kind of wicked, fucked-up, Winchester-apply-only sense that it would be wound tight to his older brother.

Sam sighs, stretches the sleep-stiff muscles of his back; the bed’s uncomfortable as hell and  _oh, just fucking wow,_  doesn’t that ring the wrong bell. He listens to Dean’s steady breathing for a while and tries to forget an icy fire, the wrath of archangels tearing into his soul; instead he closes his eyes and focuses on catching the fluttering remains of his dream. Doesn’t need to, not really, dreams are nothing but illusions after all, but it’s something to pass the time with and Sam knows it was a pleasant one.

He doesn’t get many of those, either.

Dean shifts again, laying on his side and facing Sam’s bed, one hand under the pillow – fingers curled tight around the hilt of the knife that’s always there – and brows furrowed even in his sleep. It’s not a nightmare, that fleeting whatever it is plaguing his brother’s mind right now, but nothing too pleasant as well. Sam’s breath hitches as he wonders if Dean dreams of angels falling, the skies scorched by their grace. It gets stuck somewhere in his throat, when he can only curl his fists, and once again not do anything to help his brother.

Not like… not like he could. Once. Before.

Sam raises his hand, the left one, looks at it despite the grey dark of the room. The inside of his palm is healing; the puckered , scabbed line running through the middle that’s a memento and a warning and everything in-between. Sometimes he can still feel the light – glorious, burning, painful light – seeping through damaged skin as he wound his arms tight around Dean’s back.

It still hurts, but that’s ok. It’s alright, it’s nothing new, nothing he doesn’t deserve anyway. Sam knows that now.

He makes almost no sound when he sits up, except that the bed creaks ever so and the floor is sticky and dirty underneath his feet. It’s just another wonderful motel on their miserable way back to the bunker –  _back home, Sammy,_ he hears Dean’s voice in the back of his head – and Sam couldn’t care less about what died on this particular carpet.

His toes curl and uncurl in the chilly air; there’s a smudge of dirt on the right foot, one he missed in his hurried shower the night before. The was so much grime, his hands bloody and slippery as the wounds on his hands reopened, the burn of the soap a sharp reminder he was alive, he was there, Hell’s gates opened and Heaven’s burned out, but  _he was still here_. The shudder he feels has nothing to do with the cool, damp air of the room and everything with the images flashing before his eyes.

“Oh God, only you can have that much shit going on through your head.”

Dean’s voice is sleep-thick and raspy, his face that funny, rare kind of fuzzy-soft because he hasn’t yet schooled it into his usual cool. His eyes dark, so dark, not the green Sam’s used to, because there’s no light, just the grey stretching between them.

His breath stutters, catches in his throat and Dean blinks, once, twice and that sleepy-night softness is gone,; his brother’s face all sharp lines and the focus of a deadly hunter.

Sam used to be the center of that focus –  _he remembers, no, no, he knows, he thinks he knows and his thoughts are muddled_  – used to be the axis of Dean’s world, once, weeks ago, maybe years.

_Before._

Dean sits up, rubs one hand over his face, chases the remains of sleep away. Their knees brush and a choked laugh escapes Sam; Dean’s feet are clean, of course they are. His brother leans forward, elbows on thighs and fingers twined, sturdy knuckles that bruise like no other. Sam knows that, felt them more than once against his jaw ( _a gentle caress, a punishing punch, he knows them all, deserved some, greedily took others_ ).

“You okay there, Sammy?”

“Yeah,” he shakes his head clear, runs one hand through the absolute disaster that is his hair. The scab scratches over the skin between hair, causes him to grimace. “Yeah, I’m good. ”

Dean looks at him, the distance between them small, strangely thick in the small, night-grey room. His heart – he thinks it’s heart – aches, breaks with each breath, as shadows play on Dean’s face, as they creep into the lines around his eyes and hollow out his cheeks. The freckles Sam knows by heart are ugly blotches against ashen skin, plush lips cracked and dried.

It’s everything it shouldn’t be, everything Sam wishes it wasn’t, but that golden haze he woke up to was just a dream – he knows that, he scolds himself again – and this is real, grey and tattered and painful, the ache pulsing in the rhythm of his blood through his hands.  

And then Dean’s hands are on his.

Calloused, warm ( _warm, warm, so warm, so good_ ) and familiar and gentle; more than they have the right to be. His fingers hold Sam’s hands carefully, like he’s something breakable, like he’s worth being careful with. They drag ever  _so_  over the hot, tight-pulled skin, over the ugly scab, tap against his wrists and curl around his pulse. Tug, pull and Sam’s selfish enough to go with the motion.

Dean pulls, then pushes, gentle and urgent, hands impatient and eyes scared –Sam sees that through the grey dark and it makes his breath hitch,  _don’t be afraid of me, don’t, don’t_  – and he pushes Sam onto the still warm sheet of his own bed. Rearranges, turns, moves his own body so it’s like molded against Sam’s larger one. Pushes one leg between Sam’s, catches his hands in one of his, the other heavy and hot on Sam’s neck.

With his head tucked under Dean’s chin, Sam hearts the frantic beating of his brother’s heart, heavy and loud and too fast, too fast, his own speeding up and trying to match it as he tries to breathe. It’s too warm, too hot, skin touching and sticky with sweat, the smell of the motel soap sharp and ugly in his nose.

“Don’t scare me like that ever again, Sammy,” Dean’s fingers dig into his skin, his mouth hot against the top of Sam’s head.

Sam nods, just so, something thick and ugly clogging his throat as Dean’s breath hitches. “Okay,” he rasp, fingers curling tight over Dean’s hand. “Okay, Dean, okay.”

It’s all too much, their fingers bruising and shaking; it’s everything Sam never wanted, the panic uncoiling in the depth of his stomach, the quiver of Dean’s mouth against his hair. But they’re close, wound up in each other and all over, like they hadn’t been for days –  _months years, ever_  –and it still is the only good that has happened in a while.

Dean presses a kiss to the top of his head; a hard, hot press of lips and doesn’t say a word.

But their hearts somehow slow, find a matching twin rhythm, and Sam listens, finds comfort in the soft thumps. He counts them, over and over again, until his eyes burn again and he falls asleep with his brother’s heart underneath his lips.

* * *

 

The light is bright and warm, like a lover's caress over his cheeks, and  _oh it’s nice to dream again_. Sam’s all kinds of warm and calm,  a strange, long forgotten feel of contentment wound around his bones. Breathing is easy again, air sweet and warm and filling his lungs. There's a pull at the corners of his mouth and he's smiling, soft and barely there, but he is. 

It’s okay now, he’s dreaming again, and it’s a good dream.

Except it’s not, not now and all air escapes him as Dean pulls him closer, as if trying to make them melt together. He stills and his brother makes a unhappy sound, mouths at his shoulder.

“Shh,” he pets Sam’s chest clumsily and there’s wet drag of lips over sleep-warm skin. “Sleep, Sam. Y’need sleep.”

Dean’s right hand slipped under Sam’s shirt at some point, all warm and heavy and sprawled across his chest. Keeping Sam in place, not letting him go. He’s not going anywhere.

Sam makes a soft, almost happy little noise in the back of his throat, burrows himself in the  threadbare sheets and Dean’s arms. Feels safe for now.

Feels like a loved little brother for the first time in ages and falls asleep again to his big brother breathing.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on tumblr


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